update on Zimbra 5.0_GA

[lthown]

(think of T'ealc from SG-1 as I say)

Indeed.

I'm happily buzzing away with 4.5.10 - I just couldn't find a reference to the current state of the project. I'm going to be needing to install a real signed certificate and since 5.0 allegedly makes this much easier I figured "hey, I can wait a few more days!"

At any rate, just be glad there isn't a cron job setup that grabs commands from a web site and runs them as root

It should also be noted that the page now has 12/31/07 as the targeted date.

[dljordaneku]

I have worked as a software tester before and have worked in several IT projects and I don't think I have ever seen one hit it's projected deadline once with no bugs in it. In fact one piece of software I tested was pushed so quick to market that they were happy it just worked like the product before it

So as far as I am concerned, Zimbra, take your time and make the product work like you want it to and when it is released, it's released. And then I can make ever a bigger push here to get Exchange out of here

dj

[p24t]

Originally Posted by jwilliams

I find this completely unprofessional. Yes, I want them to take their time and make sure they release a stable product. But to just miss a posted release date without an explanation or revised ETA is bush league.

What, they're not like a big, huge, monolithic company like MS or Apple. Oh wait, they both had big delays with their releases now didn't they?

Programming is not an exact science. But it is science. Mixed with art. And you can't rush artists. We're dealing with abstracts, like people who think up code in their head. Every time you do anything, you have to think about how it works, how you want it to work, how you expect it to work, and how it's going to work with other people's code.

Then you have to deal with bugs. It's not like seeing a weak point in a physical product. You have to think about how that piece works, and why it's doing what it's doing instead of what you meant it to do.

Releasing shitty code is unprofessional. Taking an extra week so my entire company doesn't lose their email to the abyss, isn't.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by jwilliams

I find this completely unprofessional. Yes, I want them to take their time and make sure they release a stable product. But to just miss a posted release date without an explanation or revised ETA is bush league.

Is this really the most important thing you could make your first forum post about?

The dates are estimated release dates until the final GA announcement and the revised date is in the Product Portal.

[jwilliams]

This was not meant to be a flame. I respect that the Zimbra team works very hard and like I said I do want them to take their time to release as good a product as possible. My frustration comes from the lack of communication about when we might be able to expect it (obviously it's not coming out on the 17th). I'm presently running 4.5 right now and it's a little buggy. I've been attempting to re-assure people by saying a new release was scheduled to be out in December, but the rumblings from corporate about us moving to an Exchange server are starting to get louder. I don't want to run Exchange, but it's hard to keep people on board when they keep tickling bugs in what we have.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by dspillett

That is assuming the issues display is up-to-date of course, but I would hazard a guess that it is either dynamicaly calculated (or at least refreshed from the developer's issue tracking system every few hours).

Of course, other issue classes (like "critical, prio 1") might also be release blockers. If there is a dev reading: can you confirm if this is/isn't the case?

The data and issues are real-time direct from bugzilla.

Your also right about blockers/critical those will for the most part block the release. Unless we can find a work around.

[p24t]

Originally Posted by jwilliams

My frustration comes from the lack of communication about when we might be able to expect it (obviously it's not coming out on the 17th). I'm presently running 4.5 right now and it's a little buggy.

I'm currently waiting for 5.0 to come out. I won't roll out an RC, and I need the shared email folders to be able to implement. (No one told me we needed those before we decided to get zcs 5 months ago, so I'm sitting on my license till then.)

I think that the crew here has been pretty good about giving out info. The 17th wasn't met, which wasn't really that much of a surprise because that's the way things go. It's 2 days later now, and looking at the pm site it shows they've pushed back to 12/31. (not sure when that was put there, but I'd seen it in the forums so I didn't bother to look.)

Then we can see whatever issues there may still exist, their status, severity etc. I think it's a good amount of info without the devs having to give more detailed status reports. Devs should be doing dev, not reports.

I know where you're coming from... after all I've been waiting for 5mo for 5.0 to come out so I can get people off my back about it. I expect it by 12/31, or shortly thereafter. But if not, I'm sure there's good reasons, even if I can't convince anyone else here of that

[jholder]

This picture/graph really is worth a thousand words

major and above

[lthown]

I've never seen RRDtool used for something like that, that's pretty cool

[LMStone]

C'mon folks, give Zimbra a break here. They have hit most release date milestones off by only a few short days or weeks, which is a lot better than many other vertical application providers out there.

Even better, regressions introduced in new releases are few and far between. Having been on the point for a $5 million software development project myself, I'd say Zimbra's track record so far has been pretty darn good.

5.0 introduces MAJOR new functionalities over 4.5.x. Getting that last 20% "right" takes 80% of the effort even when you aren't introducing new functionality. Look at the volume of bug fixes these guys are hammering out in the past few weeks! Guess who's way behind on their Christmas shopping?

Sure, would I have liked to do our 4.5-to-5.0 migration between Christmas and New Years? Of course...

But, I also cautioned our customers that 5.0 represents a major upgrade with great new features, and that we would wait until 5.0 had been out for two weeks or more before we would do our own upgrade. Our customers (as do we) value the stability in Zimbra, so I'm happy to trade off a few weeks for that stability.

Besides, there's not much that any of us can do about it, so why sweat it?

Happy Holidays to all,
Mark